


And So It Fucking Goes

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3163499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short vignettes from Ellie's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And So It Fucking Goes

You can still feel the ghost of Riley’s mouth against your neck, her hot breath damp against your skin, the blunt press of her teeth—do it again, you think as you follow Riley, do it again but this time I won’t push you away, afraid for my life.

"C’mon, hurry up—" Rile pauses, light on her feet, swaying back and forth like she can’t decide which way to turn, when she’s only always looking back.

Maybe that’s why she had returned.

They’d told you a story once about someone who’d looked back but they said she’d turned into a pillar of salt.

Well, fuck that.

~*~

It doesn’t even hurt. It should hurt, but it doesn’t. You hold your bitten arm to your face, the blood already crusting over. You scrape it off in dark flakes, and the wound bleeds open again.

Maybe, if you wipe hard enough, scrub hard enough, your flesh will be wiped clean, good as new.

You can’t even remember being bitten.

You didn’t feel a thing but the way the blood rushed through you like you were drowning. Your ears are still popping, your heart still skittering, your skin still twitching. 

Riley is already showing signs of infection, of illness. She wanders, now, her skin inflamed with fever, syllables spilling over lips that don’t quite shape themselves into words. 

You guide her so that she lies down, so that her head’s in your lap, so you can cup her face and press a kiss to her temple, run your fingers through her hair.

Her skin burns. You love her, you love her, you love her.

"Don’t go," you whisper in her ear.

She’s so sick. She’s dying.

Riley threads her fingers through yours. You hold on tight for a long time. 

"How do you feel?" she whispers. Then she coughs. "I feel like crap."

"I’m fine," you say, because that’s what you’re supposed to say when you’re waiting it out. You squeeze Riley’s hand before realizing that you hadn’t been lying.

You do feel fine—physically. You put the back of your hand to your forehead. Yeah, you’re just fine, what the fuck was that all about? 

Everything was going to be fine—except for how ashen Riley was becoming, except for the way her eyes rolled before finally closing, her head turned to the side, pressed against your thigh, still damp from the water pistols, except for how her breath stopped, her heart stilled. 

You raise your eyes, head hanging back against your neck, and you whisper a litany of fuck, fuck, fuck, and you, and then you—

~*~

You remember Riley’s hot breath against your neck, the dull press of her teeth against your skin.

Your eyes open, your heart beating too fast.

You remember her lips, how they pressed against yours.

You remember.

You hitch up your sleeve, revealing the bite healing too fast.

You were supposed to wait it out together. You were supposed to go out together. You were supposed to live and die together.

But you’re still waiting. 

You’re still fucking waiting.

It should have been Riley who’d gotten better. Who’d been immune. 

It should have been both of you surviving despite all odds, miracle babies and wonder twins and god knows what the fuck else. 

A brand new fucking hope.

You want her to come back so bad. Come back, come back, come back, and don’t go.

You’d waited over a fucking month, and one night—one night was all it took.

"Ellie?" and it’s Marlene, hands heavy on your shoulders. "You’re going to save us all."

"Okay," you say, shrugging her off. "Then let’s fucking do it."

But she’s wrong, because Riley’s fucking dead and no cure’s ever gonna bring her back because the dead stay dead, even when they don’t.

~*~

You think you fucking hate this guy. Marlene said smuggler and for some reason you’ve got an image of this Han Solo type of guy with that type of swagger with that type of arrogance and can do attitude instead of someone just cold and hard and grey who probably had forgotten how to smile a long fucking time ago.

Not that you feel much like smiling yourself.

You remember Riley’s smile, and your heart hurts all over again.

This guy probably doesn’t care about you. Probably wouldn’t care about Riley either.

But you have to go with him. You gotta fucking do it, Ellie, you tell yourself. This is something you have to do, to make it right.

Riley’s last gift to you is the pun book—some fucking joke. It’s so light you barely feel it in your back pocket even as you pull it out. “Let’s lighten the mood,” you say. “It doesn’t matter how hard you push the envelope—”

Joel never laughs. He never fucking does.

You wonder how he’s survived for twenty years—probably by turning into this.

You wonder if you’re going to turn into this.

He doesn’t look at you when he says, stay back kid even though you seethe—you know how to handle yourself. You were born into this world, didn’t fall into it like he did, and you’ve survived in it for fourteen years, almost as long as he.

You wish they’d give you a goddamn gun.

You’ve done this before.

You can help.

Maybe if you had had a gun—

You crouch in some filthy water while Joel stalks through the shadows, Tess covering his back, barely breathing at all, just little shallow breaths, and he takes out a clicker with brutal and ruthless efficiency. 

You’re something to be smuggled out. You feel like baggage, a heavy weight to be shifted from shoulder to shoulder, a pack that someone can’t wait to set down as they stretch their cramped and aching muscles. You can tell by how Tess touches you, finger to her lips, guiding you gently to a better hiding place.

~*~

"Oh shit," you say when Tess dies. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

Joel is all business, but you think he might also feel bad when it’s all over. When there’s time to fear. Adrenaline and soldiers hunting you is a good distraction, and it’s only when you crouch down as Joel prepares his alcohol and rags, when you look down and see Tess’s body, the way the blood pools, that you think oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

When this is all over, you don’t know what is going to happen. The Fireflies were supposed to be here. Tess had been the one who had wanted this job more than Joel, for some killer hardware and then, for a brief moment, for something more before she went down guns blazing.

But Joel keeps you around, and you think you might remind him of somebody.

You even catch him drop a sly wink when you complain about the other guy whose truck you finally manage to borrow after sneaking your way through too many infected. 

And you think it might not be too bad now that Tess is gone. Maybe he’ll keep you around.

~*~

It’s a long trip and the backseat makes you nauseous. Or maybe that was from reading the comic book. You tell Joel about it, to fill the silence. To be continued, what the hell was that about.

You wonder if the series ever finished. If it just stopped being printed because of all this bullshit. You might never know what happens.

You climb into the front seat because you want to, and you put your feet on the dash because you want to, and Joel doesn’t tell you to put them down.

You’re tired. You feel like Marlene looked, head rested against her fist after they buried Riley. I’m so tired, she’d said.

So are you. You’re tired and hungry and your feet hurt. You’re tired of losing people, their names engraved in the charm bracelet you used to wear before the clasp broke, that piece of shit, and it had fallen into somebody else’s ruins.

You twist at the hairband Riley had used to wear, and it’s too big for your wrist but you wear it anyway.

You fall asleep because you’re tired, you’re so fucking tired.

~*~

You wake with your head against his shoulder, and you pretend to be asleep for a few moments more. Then the rush of embarrassment comes like that time when you were young—like, super young okay, like back when your real mom was still alive—and you thought Marlene was your second mom, and she had just said, gently, that she wasn’t, but you still try to play it casual as you slide back to your side of the truck.

He doesn’t say anything, just says they’re about to come to town, so keep your eyes peeled for trouble. 

~*~

There’s always trouble. You hate it so fucking much.

~*~

You think about the guy you killed. You know it was either him or Joel. 

But you can’t stop thinking about it. You can’t stop seeing his face, another face in a long line of faces you see in that place where there are no eyes and so you can’t shut them tight or squeeze them closed or knuckle them out of your face, and you hate that this brute is with Riley, that you can’t stop thinking about her, about him, about them.

You wake with gunshot in your ears, just like before, only a little louder now.

Joel can’t hear it, not like you can.

~*~

You definitely remind him of someone. He’s kinder with you now. Like, he actually gives a shit what happens to you, and you can’t help but warm to that.

But you’re not that person, whoever they are, and you think he’ll always see them behind your eyes instead of you.

You whistle because now you can, because you taught yourself, and he doesn’t tell you that it’s bugging him or to shut up.

You whistle. You remember how Riley used to sing. You whistle the songs. You don’t know the words, the notes, the tune. You whistle, and you know that Riley would have been able to fill the spaces in between with words.

Joel listens. 

~*~

You get yourself hurt like some dumb kid. He’s wasting precious supplies on making sure you don’t get infected because haha, you might be immune to the zombie apocalypse but you could still die from a staff infection or worse.

It’s just a small cut from your knife (you figure there’s an irony in that somewhere), but he washes it with a bit of alcohol and binds it with a bit of spare rag. 

He looks at the bite, considering it. You almost want him to touch it, to feel how the scar grows which is coarse and smooth at the same time. You figure he lost whoever it was he sees in you to a bite, and maybe that’s why he’s still here.

But he doesn’t.

"That should do it," he says, rising from where he knelt beside you. 

You twitch your sleeve down, hiding your cut and your bite. 

"Sorry, Joel," you say, because you should have known better. 

He shrugs. “Shit happens, Ellie.” Yeah. You know.

~*~

They’re finally at Tommy’s and Joel takes his brother away to chat, leaving you with Marie, who you don’t know. 

You don’t want to be here.

You want to be with Joel. You want to keep going. Make it to the Fireflies. Finally finish this whole bloody mess.

You ask Marie who Joel lost, because you figure she’s not close enough to be invested and tell you to mind your business.

"His daughter," Marie says. "Her name was Sarah."

You can’t imagine Joel as a dad. You can’t imagine him having a kid. You sit down. You wonder if she was your age. You wonder what she looked like.

"Here she is—" and Marie shows you a photo of Joel and his kid—of Sarah—and they both look so happy, he looks so happy, he almost doesn’t look like Joel.

"How’d she die?" you ask.

"Killed when it first got real bad," Marie says. "Some soldiers gunned her down. Tried to kill them both, but he survived. He was carrying her, you see, because she had hurt her leg—"

Marie’s words wash over you like water and, because you can’t swim, you drown in them as you look at the photo, faded a little from the sun, between your thumb and forefinger. 

You’re not like her, you want to say—and you do, eventually, say it to him. 

But you are like her. 

You might be immune, but you can still be killed. By this time—it feels like you’ve killed more humans than infected.

You put the photo on the table, spreading it smooth with the palm of your hand. 

Marie picks it up, slides it in her pocket.

You pick it later, on your way, before you find out that Joel wants to drop your ass here with his brother and leave him to do it the rest of the way, and you don’t want that, you don’t you don’t you don’t, because you’ve come all this way together, and you don’t want to be left behind again, left by your mom, left by Riley, left by Marlene, and it’s happening again, and all he can say is, I’m not your dad, when you fucking knew that already, and you didn’t want a dad, you'd never needed one, you just needed someone, anyone who wouldn’t leave you behind again. 

And then he stays.

Like that. No questions asked.

It’s hard to believe, and you think you’re gonna cry, but you don’t as you climb up behind him.

~*~

You thought Joel was gonna die. Then you thought you were gonna die. 

You fight so hard. You always fight so hard.

Why do you always have to fight.

It’s spring, and you’re almost there, and the only thing you want to do is watch the giraffes graze, bright and yellow and gentle. 

~*~

You wake in a car and Joel’s driving. His hands are stained with blood and you can see the hard look in his eyes before they turn gentle when he sees you.

You’re wearing a hospital gown. It’s thin and not warm enough. He tells you to go back to sleep so you do. 

He tells you the story when you wake up. He’s raided a store and there’s warm clothes for you—and thick boots too and for the first time your feet are warm. 

There’s more of you. More who are immune like you.

He talks to you like normal. Like the time he told you about how he wanted to be a singer, how he had sang a little song about Queen, who had once written a song about fireflies—you think, but he didn’t remember the words, just a phrase which he sang to you, and you asked him to sing it again because it sounded so nice, even though he didn’t sing like Riley could sing. 

But if there were more and they didn’t need you, then that doesn’t explain why you were in a hospital gown when you woke up, or why they had drugged you before you’d had a chance to recover from almost drowning.

You nod. You say okay. 

They’re going back to Tommy’s place and you say yay. 

But you can’t stop thinking about it. You’re almost there when you ask him if he swears it’s true.

And he swears it.

You want to believe him. You do, you really do, so you say, okay.

~*~

It’s summer and the weather’s warm and it’s almost easy to believe there’s no infected. 

Joel keeps his promise and he teaches you to swim. He’s teaching you how to float. 

His fingers are a ghost against your skin. The water ripples around your face, pulling at your thin pony tail. You close your eyes, and the colors from the bright sun bleed into Riley’s face.

He had promised there were more like you. He had promised, he had promised, he had promised. 

His hands fall from you, and the gentle water takes you, and you’re floating, silent and still and alive.


End file.
